


how bright their frail deeds might have danced

by redandgold



Category: Football RPF
Genre: M/M, also random throwaway Gerlonso line, ft. stevie scholesy and michael owen???, in which a manc tries to write jamie carragher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-08
Updated: 2015-12-08
Packaged: 2018-05-05 13:58:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,492
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5377769
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redandgold/pseuds/redandgold
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>What are you up to today, Carra? Oh, I’m going to watch Manc Wanker No. 1 stick out his leg and do his laces.</em> It’s not his cup of tea and it shouldn’t be anyone’s cup of tea, at least anyone who’s ever seen Gary Neville and has a shred of common sense. Never in a million years, he thinks absently as he watches Manc Wanker No. 1 stick out his leg and do his laces.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how bright their frail deeds might have danced

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anemoi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/gifts).



> OR: Things Jamie Carragher Notices About Gary Neville  
> Entirely [Anemoi's](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi) fault because of this line: "jamie carragher discovering the truth abt his feelings towards gary neville while gary does mundane things like tie his shoelaces or look out into the distance" I have a 2.5k word research essay due next week that's 25% of my uni grade but nooooooo Sharon gives me carraville feelings
> 
> warning: it might start out funny but it doesn't stay that way
> 
> based on [these](https://40.media.tumblr.com/1bb2a44adf11e752327c72b4a39d8b03/tumblr_nyxrilosU01qdvi2go2_540.jpg) [two](http://www1.thesportbible.com/images/content/630w/54bd330980586.jpg) pictures I highly encourage you to click on them 
> 
> Um, I tried? :3 i hope you like it? *bats eyelashes* sorry if I messed up Carragher I still can't get him down D:

**001\. How you tie your shoelaces**

Jamie doesn't actually realise what's happening until about twenty seconds into it, when he becomes acutely aware that he’s been standing there staring at Gary Neville tie his shoelace. Which wasn’t really a sentence he thought he’d ever say, least of all something he thought he’d ever do. _What are you up to today, Carra? Oh, I’m going to watch Manc Wanker No. 1 stick out his leg and do his laces._ It’s not his cup of tea and it shouldn’t be anyone’s cup of tea, at least anyone who’s ever seen Gary Neville and has a shred of common sense. Never in a million years, he thinks absently as he watches Manc Wanker No. 1 stick out his leg and do his laces. 

Jamie doesn’t actually realise what happened until he becomes acutely aware that Neville has already left, but for some really fucking weird reason he’s still seeing it in his head, the way the loop goes under the next and how incredibly, offensively neat it is. For a moment he feels like marching over to pull the other one and make Neville do it again. Then he pauses, frowns, his face doing the thing where it’s even more scrunched up than usual because he’s thinking. Which doesn’t really happen much because he’s Scouse and a footballer and a Scouse footballer, but if he’s right and he’s just caught himself eyeing up Gary fucking Neville, he’s got a shitload to think about.

“What the f – ”

 _And_ he needs to find a church.

 

**008\. Your long throw**

It’s long. Like, Coronation Street-long. Like, was that a throw or a cross?-long, and Jamie’s not sure why he’s never noticed that before; maybe it’s because he doesn’t usually play with Neville, maybe it’s because, you know, _normal_ people don’t generally care about the way Manc twats chuck balls. He hangs outside the box and watches the stringy, scrawny hairball-on-a-stick standing on the sideline, his arms curving up behind his head, fingers latched firmly on his prize.

The ball arcs into the box but Jamie hasn’t followed the ball. He’s just thinking about how goddamn long that was. Spain – or whoever they’re playing – scramble it out and Neville is back off sprinting, and Jamie runs with it. Him. He’s not sure which.

What he’s sure of is that he’s about the crudest person he knows – and that’s saying something because he’s a _Northerner_ – but even he turns Liverpool-red when the typical connotation of ‘long’ comes to mind.

 

**017\. The drink you get in a bar (or lack of one)**

The best thing about playing for England is that you get so many condolence-drink parties. After crashing spectacularly out of the Euros, they’re crammed into a dingy little outfit off the main street, and Jamie is sat two tables away from the United gang. Stevie, drunk on all of two Appletinis – Jamie shakes his head in obligatory disappointment – is shouting in his ear about that sodding Spaniard again. Michael has commenced his lecture on 101 Ways to Pass Out in Questionable Puddles, and the jazz singer has evidently been paid to destroy everyone’s eardrums.

Jamie should be stood on the table telling everyone to go fuck themselves by now, but he isn’t. He hasn’t touched his drink; instead he’s looking at a drink two tables away. None of the Mancs swill very much anyway, but Neville the Elder is holding a glass in his hand, and Jamie squints at it, wondering what it is. Wondering why he wants to know, because on the whole it really doesn’t matter, in fact it’s so miniscule it’s smaller than Jay fucking Spearing, this drink that someone he doesn’t even know or care about is having.

Vodka or water, he decides after about fifteen minutes, during which time he’s not sure whether he was only looking at the drink. Vodka or water, two (a number he ignores) tables away from him, and Jamie thinks suddenly that he’d like him either way.

Maybe he _is_ a little drunk after all.

 

**023\. Your stupid haircut**

They’re both on the bench against Poland, and for some weird-arsed reason they’re sitting next to each other, maybe because all their mates are playing and they are the ones left behind. Jamie has a full blown war with his internal monologue for a good part of the first half, trying to figure out what to do and where to look and who not to look at. He (thinks he) wins and tilts his head to the side, allowing himself just this one moment of weakness, career own goals not counted.

The first thing he wants to do is drag him to the Manc Wanker Barber’s and give him a sodding haircut, because no one, least of all someone that age, should be running around with fucking curtains hanging in their face. Fifty thousand quid a week, and Neville still can’t find a barber who’ll make sense of him. Jamie ignores his own haircut for the purpose of this argument.

A breeze in the distance picks up and ruffles Neville’s hair, making it just that little bit more tousled, and Jamie blinks, not sure what he’s just experienced. Surely it can’t have been a jolt of warmth, oddly comforting, fizzing down his spine. And surely it can’t have been a twinge in his hand as it picked itself off the bench almost unconsciously, reaching for those fucking curtains, before he remembered how different their reds were.

 

**040\. How your forehead creases**

Gary Neville is shouting at Jamie Carragher in their twice-yearly ritual sometimes involving Howard Webb, and everything is as it should be. Except everything is _not_ as it should be, because Jamie isn’t listening, he’s staring at the crease on the Manc’s forehead. It’s this absurd groove that cuts into his face, that Jamie realises appears every time he’s being a grumpy intense bastard, which is all the time.

“You can fuck off right back to Everton with your zero fucking medals,” Neville is screaming at Jamie, or more specifically at Jamie’s chin, because he might be a skinny prick but he’s certainly not a tall one. Jamie figures that if he tried he could probably push Neville and his crease over with two fingers. He knows which two fingers he’d use, too.

Instead he yells back, “Now that’s a mental image I wouldn’t One to Four-get,” and resists the urge to follow up with, “and your shouting couldn’t turn a tap on,” because that would mean grappling with some unfortunate implications he really doesn’t want to think of now or ever.

Jamie wonders vaguely how anyone can be that much of a grumpy intense bastard all the time, and wonders vaguely whether it really is all the time or whether he’s different outside of work, and wonders vaguely whether he should start hanging out with people outside of work more.

**052\. The way you say ‘Liverpool’**

Jamie doesn’t really know what he expected Gary Neville to do after football besides punditry, because that man can talk (has talked) for England, and one of the good things about not being a Manc is he gets to keep both ears. At first Jamie’s just glad that he will never have to share a pitch with the wanker again, so whatever he wants to do is his business; it’s not like he’s obligated to sit through an hour of Gary fucking Neville shitting on Liverpool week in-out, is he?

What he is obligated to do is sit matches out when the gaffer doesn’t call him up, so one Monday he’s sat at home waiting for Liverpool-Sunderland to start, and Neville’s just flashing on screen. Jamie picks up the remote to mute him till the game, but his hand hovers over the button without ever pushing down.

There’s a peculiar way he says the word, a way Jamie’s not heard before, busy as he’s been dreaming up ways to strangle him instead. The way he twists the ‘-ool’ into ‘-ewl’, dragging it out just a millisecond too long, the way his Bury twang makes him rush through the second syllable, like he’s stumbling into the word with a measure of surprise then picking himself up and brushing himself down.

This is some Romeo and Juliet-level shit, Jamie thinks sourly, wondering when the fuck he’d been reduced to liking the way a Manc said the name of his heart, and not just any Manc, the one who’d humped the Kop like the biggest fucking twat in the world. But Jamie doesn’t turn the TV off, and he only half watches the match, _Liverpool Liverpool Liverpool_ beating the craziest of fucking tattoos into his brain.

 

**076\. Your sleeve (not your hand)**

Jamie doesn’t really know what he expected to do after football besides punditry, though when Sky decides to put him in the same room as Gary he almost quits to join BT or become a fucking hermit. They meet for the first time at nine a.m. on a Monday morning, and in about fifty seconds Gary has sped through hellos (‘you big dumb fuck’), procedure (‘I’m doing Chelsea and Villa, you can take your precious Liverpool, break you in easy, not much to talk about that’) and etiquette (‘first names, yeah, let’s be grown up about this, if that’s, y’know, possible for you’).

Against this barrage Jamie tries to hold his own (‘you pudgy little shit’, ‘and your precious United isn’t even worth a mention’, ‘I’ll try not to throw up, _Gary_ , jesus, where’s the barf bag?’). But he’s immediately aware how he’s encroached on something so distinctly Neville-esque, as Gary jumps up and down like an endearingly psychotic rabid hummingbird on sugared caffeine, leaving no room for anyone else to think, let alone talk.

Which, he reflects as the cameras start rolling, might not necessarily be a bad thing. The last thing he needs is time to dwell on how, when they’re both on the big screen, sometimes his sleeve (hand) brushes Gary’s sleeve (hand), the most nothing-at-all of contacts, so quick it doesn’t even happen, but all Jamie wants is for it to not-happen again.

 

**084\. When you talk about Scholes**

They have very many arguments about this, as you do, but Jamie has learnt to pick things up, even if Gary doesn’t realise he’s doing them. Every time he starts talking about the ‘best player he’s ever played with’, his eyes sort of glaze over with growing up, and the corner of his lip quirks into a half-smile for halcyon days. His voice becomes both firmer and somehow more excited, barely able to contain how phenomenal that ginger twat was. If Jamie puts a lightbulb over Gary’s head right now he’s pretty sure it’d light up. It becomes almost like a dream, and Jamie can see Gary back under the grey skies of Old Trafford, medals round his neck, Carragher just that annoying Scouse bastard who’s only mentioned when someone brings up shit accents.

“Did you practice that with Scholesy?” Jamie fires at him one day, and Gary laughs in that stupid cackle of his, like a little boy slightly embarrassed of what he’d done but weirdly proud of it all the same. “Against Liverpool a few times,” he responds, and Jamie laughs back, but that’s it, isn’t it – _against_ , not _with_. Gary has Scholesy and Jamie has Stevie, and you can’t grow up again, and you’ve got mates and _mates_ , and you can’t force a lip to quirk or a lightbulb to shine.

That doesn’t mean Jamie’s not going to sodding try.

 

**091\. Your middle name**

“Lee Duncan,” Jamie says, making Gary look away from the match and stare at him like he’s just said that he’d fuck a Manc given the chance (which he probably would, but Gary doesn’t need to know that).

“What’re you on about?” Gary snorts, turning back to making notes as the little players run circles on the green grass in front of him.

“Middle names.” Jamie doesn’t know what the fuck he’s saying, just that he needs to say it. Making conversation, and that. “Gordon Lee and Duncan McKenzie.”

Gary nearly chokes on the water he’s drinking. “ _Evertonians_?” he grins. “Christ. Calling you Lee from now on.”

“Shut the hell up and tell me yours, Neville.”

Maybe Jamie meant for it to be some sort of sappy soul-searching gimmick where Gary tells him and realises also what Jamie’s trying to say, but nothing in life goes according to plan. “Alexander,” Gary says without missing a beat, scribbling furiously in his notebook as a red-shirted player loses the ball. “Fuck, did you see how sloppy that was? Lucky we’ve got de Gea, or we’d be where your lot usually is right about now.”

Jamie doesn’t respond, and it’s not like Gary wants him to respond anyway, so involved is he in the game. Not that Jamie minds; he just sits and watches Gary Alexander Neville at work, brow creasing, because that’s what he loves most about him, angry intense bastard that he is.

“Jesus Christ,” he mutters as he realises what he’s just said.

“No, _Alexander_ ,” Gary chirps without turning around. Jamie looks at him helplessly, caught in a wave of something too real for him to understand, him and this Manc who’s just said the name of his heart, humping the Kop like the biggest twat in the world.

 

**117\. The hole you leave**

It’s a bigger hole than it was a couple years ago; Jamie blames the free wine. It shouldn’t even be there, he reminds himself, standing next to an ex-Liverpool teammate he technically has more reason to care about. Done and dusted, and later he can scroll through the pictures on the internet and see him and Phil cavorting around in unfamiliar crests (he never thought he’d miss seeing the red devil), but for now he’s got a live TV show to present.

“The only man we could find who’s more unpopular than Gary Neville”, he introduces Bellamy, wondering (hoping?) if Gary will tune in today or tomorrow or a week from now, watch this and cackle like a little boy, slightly embarrassed and weirdly proud.

Once during the broadcast Jamie looks up and sees what he wants to see; a slightly-pudgier-stick, haircut barely improved, crease in his forehead as he talks about Scholesy and Liv’rpewl. _What are you up to today, Carra? Oh, I’m going to wait for Manc Wanker No. 1 to brush his hand against mine._

No, he’s not. He’s going to talk to Craig, not Alexander. He’s going to plug the hole with faultless analysis and a new guest every week. He’s going to finish the broadcast and go home and have a drink (water or vodka). And maybe he’s going to flick through twitter, just to check that he’s still ‘actually alright’; just to allow himself the briefest of half-smiles and halcyon days.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Tonight was the first night I didn't watch MNF in years LOL /is sad but I saw that video of Carra's dig at Gaz and I just had to fit that in bc oH MY GOD CARRA MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE
> 
> Title is from [Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/do-not-go-gentle-good-night):  
>  _Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright_  
>  _Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay_
> 
> Chronology is probably all fucked to pieces - I guess the majority of the first is around the 00-06 period??? - then 052. onwards is MNF days (wow Jamie you notice a hell lot of things during MNF days)  
> Carra's middle name on the Evertonians is from wiki oops! Gary's middle name is defo Alexander and I love that Philip's middle name is John because Gaz gets this cool four syllable name and then Phil gets 'John'  
> I'm sorry for how weak my Liverpool banter is (I don't actually know if 1-4 occurs during the chronology of that bit but I really don't want to look it up) 
> 
> Random observations: 1. I love the stupid crease in Gary's forehead when he concentrates 2. I love the way he says 'Liverpool' I really do go listen to him say it it's beautiful 3. Gary has an incredibly long throw I can't remember which game it was but once he threw it straight into the box and someone scored off a header 4. [First pictures](https://36.media.tumblr.com/3a1dec0644bf4df11eefbb8fb7a21099/tumblr_nz0dn5zf0D1uu9mt6o1_540.jpg) of him in the Valencia jacket today I cried I never thought I'd see him in anything but United (still a cutie pie tho)
> 
> I REALLY DON'T LIKE THE ENDING CRIES BUT IT'S 1AM AND I GIVE UP /FLIPS TABLE/ WHAT IS THIS SHIP  
> I promise there will be happy carraville one day .... some day 
> 
> Lastly I hope you enjoy it!! Thank you for loving my fave manc wanker with me <3


End file.
